Exercises in Youth

Performed at: Gong Theatre, Sibiu, Romania (commissioned by & presented as part of the Summer Season International Theatre Festival)

Date: July 2012

Inspired from the Romanian fairytale Tinerete fara batranete si viata fara de moarte (Youth without Old Age and Life without Death),Exercitii in Tinerete/Exercises in Youth is a meditation on time, home, and what modes of belonging may (still) be possible under conditions of displacement and migration. Combining visual projections, puppets, and choreographed movement, the performance tells a story about longing, nostalgia, and joy. In-between reality and (im)possibility, Ioana Jucan and Ria T. DiLullo travel through time following the traces of the Handsome Wo/Man, “wanderer of being” (Constantin Noica), and stop only when they have reached the age when “the flee would put on horseshoes, ninety-nine iron weights on one leg, and jump up into the heart of the sky to bring us stories” (a formulation often present in Romanian fairy-tales).